“We have made tracking progress easy with a Microsoft BI solution. The other city councils we’ve showed it to have been very impressed, because whereas they have five or six people keeping track, we have just one person who presses a button once a month.”

Marlo Valente, Head of Enterprise Services, Leicester City Council

England’s Leicester City Council wanted better insight into the services provided to citizens. To eliminate information silos and improve business intelligence (BI), the council implemented a solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. Now, the council can quickly produce reports, gain valuable and actionable insight into its services and citizens, and extend its BI platform with new capabilities as the need arises. As a result, Leicester City Council has more opportunities to transform communities and improve the lives of its citizens.

Business NeedsLeicester City Council is responsible for providing all of the local government services for the city of Leicester, England. The council provides services including housing, social care, education, licensing, leisure and environmental services. To administer public services more efficiently and respond better to citizens’ needs, Leicester City Council required more

insight into all of its functions. However, the council was hindered by time-consuming manual processes and limited access to information.

Responding to an inquiry about a single service—such as obtaining a business license—could be fairly straightforward. However, with disparate data sources and reporting tools, gaining a more holistic

Customer: Leicester City CouncilWebsite: www.leicester.gov.ukCustomer Size: 15,000 employeesCountry or Region: EnglandIndustry: Government agencies—Local government agencies

Customer ProfileLeicester City Council provides all of the government services to approximately 300,000 people in Leicester, England.

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise Microsoft Office− Microsoft Office 2010

Services− Bing Maps

Technologies − Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Reporting Services

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British City Council Improves Services and Gains Valuable Insight with Microsoft BI Solution

overview of multiple services was challenging.

More often than not, pulling information together involved time-consuming manual processes. “Nobody had access to all the data,” says Marlo Valente, Head of Enterprise Services at Leicester City Council. “So when a new case was established by one of the teams, people would spend half a day ringing up colleagues for information.”

As a result, it could be difficult to track the records of an individual citizen, let alone monitor programs that affected entire communities. “It was very difficult to get an overview because it depended on finding the right person with the information you needed,” says Valente. “For example, we might be paying benefits to someone who owed money to another service. But without a way to easily share data, different parts of the council had no way of knowing that they were involved with the same citizen.”

To improve insight and services, Leicester City Council wanted to eliminate information siloes, gain better BI capabilities, and share data more easily.

SolutionIn 2010, Leicester City Council kicked off an overhaul of its entire IT environment that included replacing its aging Novell infrastructure with Microsoft products including Microsoft Office 2010. The council also implemented Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 to connect disparate applications to a data warehouse based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise software and the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system. The solution integrated not only internal data sources, but also local crime and demographic data. Then the council created a reporting solution based on SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

For reporting, the council first designed a geographic visualization of service consumption with Bing Maps. Then, in September 2012, it created a central SharePoint portal with multiple dashboards for visualizing data according to the user’s role and area of interest. For example, the council is using the new BI and reporting

tools to locally support the United Kingdom’s Troubled Families program. The solution opens doors for engaging citizens and improving communities. The program’s goal is to identify families in need of help and then provide the appropriate resources. By integrating data sets from agencies such as education, law enforcement, and social benefits, council staff or officers can immediately identify at-risk families. Equally important, they can use the same tools to monitor the family members after they receive help.

BenefitsLeicester City Council has better insight into data from multiple sources, faster reporting, and a better foundation for new services and capabilities with its Microsoft BI solution.

Easier Access to Mission-Critical DataBefore, with multiple reporting tools and information silos, it was virtually impossible to pull together information. Now, council staff or officers can quickly find all the data they need in a central interface. For example, the council recently integrated a new social care system with the solution, which gives social workers better insight into the families they serve. “With Microsoft BI tools we have a global view of the services we provide,” says Valente. “Not only that, we can drill down and have a single view of an individual family and all of the transactions that take place around a given address.”

Faster Reporting and Better Performance TrackingLeicester City Council is using an end-to-end Microsoft BI solution to make measurable improvements in the lives of its citizens. “One of the problems with the Troubled Families program is that a lot of external agencies are involved, which makes it difficult to monitor progress,” notes Valente. “But we have made tracking progress easy with a Microsoft BI solution. The other city councils we’ve showed it to have been very impressed, because whereas they have five or six people keeping track, we have just one person who presses a button once a month.”

Improved Support for New ServicesThe council has the platform it needs to provide new services as well as improve its

own efficiency. For example, to increase openness and transparency, it is creating a new data warehouse with online access so that citizens can easily browse, view, and map published data. And to speed requests, the council is also making more services accessible through mobile devices. “With a Microsoft BI solution based on SQL Server, we can quickly spin up reports and performance indicators,” says Valente. “It’s an enabling platform, and we can do things now fairly simply that we wouldn’t have dreamed of in the past.”

Better BI FoundationLeicester City Council looks forward to extending its solution further. It has already integrated law enforcement data and is working on integrating information from the National Health Service. The council also plans to upgrade to SQL Server 2014 and implement new cloud-based reporting tools with Microsoft Power BI for Office 365.

Leicester City Council anticipates expanding its platform with more self-service capabilities and data sets. “We’re really excited about implementing Power BI for Office 365 too,” says Valente. “Now that we have the basic platform in place, we’re planning to bring in new data sources from the field of education, and something similar from housing. We’re going to make as much use of this solution as we can.”

This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2014